Puerto Lumbreras

The A-7 slips past Puerto Lumbreras at 120 km/h, close enough for lorry drivers to spot the petrol station but too fast for the castle on the ridge to register. Most traffic barrels on towards Lorca or Almería, which is why the town’s Saturday market still prices tomatoes for neighbours rather than tour operators, and why the observatory keeps five-euro notes in a biscuit tin instead of running an online booking system.

At 465 m above sea level, Puerto Lumbreras sits where the last folds of the Betic cordillera flatten into the Guadalentín Valley. The altitude knocks the edge off Murcia’s furnace; summer nights drop to 22 °C, and winter mornings can start with a grass frost that burns off by coffee time. The Sierra de las Estancias looms immediately south – limestone, almonds, wild rosemary – while the flood-plain north of town is given over to broccoli and lettuces that arrive wrapped in British supermarkets come March.

A castle without a siege, a church without a steeple

Castillo de Nogalte is less a castle than a thickened wall tracing an irregular triangle. The Arabs raised it in the twelfth century, the Christians patched it up, then everybody forgot it until the council added handrails. What survives is enough to stand on and look down the rambla – a dry canyon that becomes a torrent every decade or so – and across to the photovoltaic farm glittering on the opposite ridge. Entry is free; gates open at ten, shut at dusk, and the interpretation panel still promises a video that no-one has seen working since 2019.

Walk back into town and the eighteenth-century Iglesia de Nuestra Señora del Rosario looks startled to find itself rebuilt. The Lorca earthquake of 2011 shook the plaster off, cracked the dome, and toppled the statue of Saint Expedite whose niche now holds a laminated notice about structural grout. Sunday Mass is at 11:30; visitors are welcome but the priest keeps the side doors locked until the Gloria finishes, so latecomers shuffle in under the bell tower that was never tall enough for a proper steeple.

Caves, almonds and a pig that feeds the village for a week

Behind the church, Calle San José climbs into the rock face where thirty-odd houses are still burrowed into the sandstone. Some are storerooms, one is a hairdresser, another sells jars of honey labelled with the beekeeper’s mobile number. The temperature inside stays at 18 °C year-round; during the Civil War they doubled as air-raid shelters, and older residents recall homework by paraffin lamp because the town generator was bombed. Knock politely – most owners are happy to show the curved ceiling and the alcove where the canary slept.

Out of town, almond orchards cover the lower slopes. Harvest starts late August: families lay nets, whack the branches, and fill plastic crates that fetch €2.20 a kilo at the co-op. If you smell hot oil on a October morning, someone is grinding the first press for family use; the pale oil sells in 2-litre bottles from garage forecourts for €8, cash only.

January means the matanza. A single pig becomes morcilla, chorizo, tocino and a hill of russet-coloured jamón that dangles in spare bedrooms until June. Restaurante Mesón Villarejo buys one whole animal each year; order the plato de matanza (€12) and you get a slice of everything, plus local wine that costs €2.50 a glass and tastes like a blackberry fights a bonfire.

Stars, scooters and the sound of silence

Five kilometres south on the RM-717, the Centro Astronómico de la Sierra de las Estancias sits at 1,100 m, far enough from the motorway for the Milky Way to cast a shadow. Public nights are Wednesday and Saturday: turn up before 21:00 (22:00 in summer), slide a fiver into the tin, and a volunteer points the 40-cm reflector at Saturn’s rings or the Orion Nebula. Red torches only – white light kills night vision and they will confiscate your phone torch without apology. Bring a coat; even July can dip below 15 °C once the wind rolls off the ridge.

Daytime, the same road leads to Cabezo de la Jara, a 1,237 m summit that takes ninety minutes from the picnic area. The track is rough but driveable; park where the tarmac ends and walk the final 3 km. Boot prints are rare, boot prints speaking English rarer still, so expect curious nods from elderly locals gathering pine cones for kindling. From the top you can see the coast at Aguilas, 35 km away, and the cemetery-white plastic of Almería’s greenhouses glinting like snow that never melts.

How to do nothing in particular

Puerto Lumbreras does not do blockbuster attractions; it does rhythm. Market day is Tuesday: the square fills with sock stalls and a van that grills chickens on rotisserie spits, €6.50 each, paper bag of juices included. By 13:30 the bars are loud with clatter and the smell of frying garlic; by 16:00 everything closes except the chemist and the petrol station. Siesta is not a quaint custom here – it is the only sensible response to a July sun that can hit 42 °C in the shade.

Evenings stretch. Families walk the Paseo de la Constitución, grandparents clockwise, teenagers counter-clockwise, each lap a social census. Order a café con leche at Heladería Torremocha and you will be asked “¿Descafeinado?” with the seriousness of a medical consultation. The ice-cream flavours include nata (plain custard) and turrón (nougat) – choose both, €2.20, and sit on the metal chairs that screech across the tiles like seagulls.

Getting there, getting fed, getting away

The town is 70 km south-west of Murcia International (Ryanair from Bournemouth, Manchester, Birmingham). A hire car is simplest: exit the airport, follow the A-30 to Lorca, then the A-7 for fifteen minutes. Trains run to Lorca-Sutullena twice daily from Alicante; from there a local bus (€1.55, 35 min) rattles through to Puerto Lumbreras, timed – more or less – to meet the service.

Bed choices are thin. Hotel El Paso on the ring road has 38 rooms, pool, and a buffet that British reps rate “fine for one night” (€65 B&B). Casa Rural Cerro de la Horca, 4 km out among almond groves, offers two cottages with wood burners and no neighbours (from €90, two-night minimum). Motor-home owners sign the clipboard at the Polideportivo and stay 48 h free; grey-water drain is beside the basketball court, potable tap by the gate, police chalk your tyres at 09:00 sharp.

Leave on a Thursday and you will share the café with lorry drivers collecting Dutch lettuces. Stay for the weekend and you might catch the Cruzes de Mayo, when every street corner sprouts a paper-flower cross and the bars run out of ice by 22:00. Stay longer and someone will lend you an almond rake, invite you to the matanza, or simply ask why you came. Explain that the motorway missed the turning, shrug, pay for your coffee, and walk the paseo one more lap while the sun drops behind the castle wall.